Richard Stallman leaves MIT after controversial remarks on rape

There's a huge gulf between the seriousness of some of these crimes, but too many people want to paint everything with the same brush. Forcing a girl to the ground and grabbing her privates is described the same way as some guy slapping her ass, sexual assault. Stalman loses his job for arguing about the morality of a one year age difference, while Wienstien loses his job for forcing starlets to sleep with him in order to get roles in his movies. If you try to distinguish the two, Salman and the ass slapper are clearly not in the same league as the others, you get shot down as not supporting #metoo

For fuck's sake, you're making a beautiful case for why people are so outraged. Yes, there's a difference in severity between "slapping a woman's ass" and "holding her down and grabbing her privates." But, guess what?

Both are sexual assault.

The problem here is that people seem to think debating over degrees of severity is more important than the fact people have to speak up about how pervasive sexual harassment and assault is in our society. And Stallman didn't lose his job just for making those comments, but for years and years of shitty behavior. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

And here we have a prime example of why arguments like yours get downvoted:

Quote:

We live in a world where some people might steal your backpack and other people might mug you at gunpoint. We know that one is worse than the other. We can discuss it like sane adults. But everything is so heated up that people are being painted as complicit if they acknowledge that a teacher sleeping with his 18 year old student is not the same as him raping her. That's not a good place to start if we want to address either of those situations.

You're not just moving goalposts, you're switching sports entirely here. Statutory rape is still rape because these people are underage & we cannot get lost in the weeds of "well, is this particular kid mature enough to make that decision without fucking them up for the rest of their life?" And no, it's not prosecuted the same as violent rape, so ... it's completely orthogonal to the point you were (apparently) trying to make.

This is a terrible argument because it comes across as downplaying one form of assault as "no big deal." Yeah, there are worse ones, but that doesn't mean the others are acceptable, any more than shooting someone to rob them is more acceptable than shooting someone because you hate them. They're both awful.

I don't care what Stallman was referring to. This entire thread has been about the statutory variety you arrogant twat.

Moreover, Minsky IS suspected of the statutory kind, so your red herring bullshit is doubly irrelevant.

Your comment was *literally* about Stallman's defense of Minsky. Stallman's defense of Minsky was that he was not guilty of rape because he didn't know the girl was coerced. This is one problem with using the same language for "rape" and "statutory rape". Stallman's defense was clearly about whether Minsky had forcibly raped someone. On the issue of statutory rape, he clearly thought it silly that depending on geographic location, one may be guilty of statutory rape.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize age of consent varied based on Stallman's opinion of it.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as age of consent,is in fact, GNU/consent, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus consent.

No, GNU/consent is the framework of justifications that Stallman's layered over his arguments on the age of consent.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

I don't care what Stallman was referring to. This entire thread has been about the statutory variety you arrogant twat.

Moreover, Minsky IS suspected of the statutory kind, so your red herring bullshit is doubly irrelevant.

Your comment was *literally* about Stallman's defense of Minsky. Stallman's defense of Minsky was that he was not guilty of rape because he didn't know the girl was coerced. This is one problem with using the same language for "rape" and "statutory rape". Stallman's defense was clearly about whether Minsky had forcibly raped someone. On the issue of statutory rape, he clearly thought it silly that depending on geographic location, one may be guilty of statutory rape.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize age of consent varied based on Stallman's opinion of it.

If you have something intelligent to add, please do. Right now, you're batting .000. (Side note: I have always disliked Stallman personally).

Obviously, legally, age of consent varies. But morally, which is what Stallman was referencing, it does in fact seem odd that it varies so widely. It is quite odd indeed that in one place you can have sex with a 17 year old and in another place that will send you to prison, cost your career, etc. Of course, people are responsible for following the laws where they are, but morally that is peculiar.

There is nothing odd at all about different places having different laws.

Morally, things aren't all that far apart here either. Very few people think it would be awesome for a 73 year old MIT professor to fuck an 18 year old sex slave. It is creepy at least.

Beyond that, we are negotiating a line of where creepy becomes criminal. Again, it such lines are often arbitrary even when based on the same principles. The principle here is that adults should not fuck children.

There doesn't seem to be anything very objectionable about the US Virgin Islands law on the matter.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

You can put testosterone in a bottle, and the bottle will remain pristine for decades. Put it into some very clever brains, and it corrodes away the intelligence at a frightening speed. Hi Bill C! No, Mango Musso, there was nothing there to corrode to begin with.

I don't care what Stallman was referring to. This entire thread has been about the statutory variety you arrogant twat.

Moreover, Minsky IS suspected of the statutory kind, so your red herring bullshit is doubly irrelevant.

Your comment was *literally* about Stallman's defense of Minsky. Stallman's defense of Minsky was that he was not guilty of rape because he didn't know the girl was coerced. This is one problem with using the same language for "rape" and "statutory rape". Stallman's defense was clearly about whether Minsky had forcibly raped someone. On the issue of statutory rape, he clearly thought it silly that depending on geographic location, one may be guilty of statutory rape.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize age of consent varied based on Stallman's opinion of it.

If you have something intelligent to add, please do. Right now, you're batting .000. (Side note: I have always disliked Stallman personally).

Obviously, legally, age of consent varies. But morally, which is what Stallman was referencing, it does in fact seem odd that it varies so widely. It is quite odd indeed that in one place you can have sex with a 17 year old and in another place that will send you to prison, cost your career, etc. Of course, people are responsible for following the laws where they are, but morally that is peculiar.

There is nothing odd at all about different places having different laws.

Morally, things aren't all that far apart here either. Very few people think it would be awesome for a 73 year old MIT professor to fuck an 18 year old sex slave. It is creepy at least.

Beyond that, we are negotiating a line of where creepy becomes criminal. Again, it such lines are often arbitrary even when based on the same principles. The principle here is that adults should not fuck children.

There doesn't seem to be anything very objectionable about the US Virgin Islands law on the matter.

The very bizarre thing is that these are the deep philosophical thoughts one would expect from a 16 year old stoner between sick bong rips. Isn't it like, weird, how something can be legal in one place and illegal in others!? Like, whoah! I can literally be one foot illegal and one foot legal! Duuuuuude!

Most people eventually figure out that there's reasons for all of this and none of it is new. But no, 66 year old Richard M. Stallmann thought it was the perfect time to start with this, on his work mailing list, while said workplace was being under scrutiny for being funded by a guy who ran a underage brothel island for his and his rich and famous friends and then covering it up, while already having decades of people accusing him of being, in the mildest terms, inconsiderate.

There's a huge gulf between the seriousness of some of these crimes, but too many people want to paint everything with the same brush.

No, they don't actually, that's just the convenient narrative people like you make up to avoid having to face the reality of things. There's plenty of nuance, you're just ignoring it with nonsense like:

"Well both people lost their job!"

That's the most pathetic equivalency argument I've ever seen.

Here's the basic truth, there's nothing nefarious or complicated about this: If you are in a position of power, or a figurehead or face of an organization, and you do things that are embarrassing to them, and compromise their mission, you will be asked to leave. Your cost has outweighed your worth, the math is simple.

That's not censorship, or mob rules or whatever other nonsense people want to call it. A witch hunt! It's not, as one person laughably tried to argue, about whether the things that were said were illegal.

That's basic shit, that's how it works. MIT fucked up. Big time. They looked the other way to cash checks, and they were shady about it, and it's costing people jobs as the fallout comes down. The fact that they went to such lengths to hide the source of the money, even internally, is more than enough proof to show they knew what was going down. It's just, well, it was a lot of money and they didn't care. And now it looks really bad. And anyone who is in a position of defending sex trafficking underage girls and treating women badly is now holding the ball, and being asked to put it down, and pick up a box with their stuff instead.

Ultimately this is a story of greed overruling morals. And there are people who want desperately to defend MIT, because they like the things that money buys, and they like the cushy environment they surround themselves in. And that it has consequences for other people is inconvenient and easy to ignore.

By the way, the same applies to the brouhaha about MIT taking Epstein's money. Did their taking his money cause him to go molest any more girls? No, it did not. It had no effect at all on any girls. This business of seeing money as somehow unclean because of some unrelated action of the person who gave it to you stinks of irrationality.

Yes, yes it did cause him to go rape more girls. His position of power and being a source of funding for multiple organizations was part of the reason why he got a sweet ass deal the first time he got caught for this shit. What happened then? He was able to go around and kept raping girls and providing others with girls to rape while he was serving is joke of a sentence. Had he not had all this shield he would've been in prison since then, and many girls wouldn't have been raped. Now, you can make the ignorance argument from donations before his trial, but MIT accepted donations after that, when it was known what he was doing and the source of his wealth come up under some pretty dark clouds.

No one seems to know where his money came from, and when you have that much money and no clear records of its origin that speaks volumes. So chances are this is either payment for the girls by the rich people who seem to make suspicious transactions to his accounts, or payment for his silence, which is a distinction without a difference with respect to the situation. Basically there's a huge chance, borderline certainty at this point, that the money he gave to MIT originated as profit from child sex trafficking. I think it's not that irrational for an educational institution which has the task of forming young minds to refuse to take that money. Moral stances are not purely irrational, which basically is the argument you're making. You may disagree with the rationale, and maybe even have a good argument to make, but there is a rationale.

Other countries' empirical processes put the mark at 16. Calling such an arbitrarily-defined line in the sand the demarcation line of whether consensual sex is rape is absurd. That's all I am saying.

Ooo... line drawing fallacy. When does it not become absurd? 17? 16? 15? What privileges what "other countries' empirical processes" determine over what the country in question's empirical processes have determined?

BTW, U.S. Virgin Islands set the age of consent at 16 if the partner is less than 5 years older, otherwise at 18. So try arguing against the actual empirical process at issue, for a change.

You are aware that "line-drawing" fallacy means exactly what you are doing? Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand over something which has NO clear demarcation point and calling everyone beyond that line a criminal and a rapist.

I support that whatever empirical processes the countries that consider 16 the legal age employ have equal validity to the empirical processes the countries that consider 18 the legal age employ. Since you insist on the 18 number, argue against it.

Fine I'm FINALLY going to say something about your idiotic sideshow. There is a line because there has to be a line, otherwise there would be no line. The line is arbitrary because there is no other way and if it wasn't, there would be no line. People do not universally agree on where that arbitrary line is because cultures are different. The only thing you can do is read up on your local laws and abide by them.

Umm no. There doesn't have to be a line. It can be a exponential curve.

what the fuck am i reading

The lengths that some men will go to defend other men who are facing the consequences of their shitty actions.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

Yes, yes it did cause him to go rape more girls. His position of power and being a source of funding for multiple organizations was part of the reason why he got a sweet ass deal the first time he got caught for this shit.

Exactly.

Don't expect a response, he didn't have one for me on this topic either.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

"Fucking kids is just like making them eat their broccoli".

(As an aside, making kids eat things that disgust them is often bad parenting.)

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

So the 56% who were verbally pressured into sex mean we should dismiss the whole thing and assume it was technically consentual, or what? Are we using this as an excuse to dismiss the 46% who experienced physical force, or do we have to drop into the whole "they probably liked it" stuff for that one?

Oh, and FYI: Scott Alexander doesn't know what the word "fallacy" means, so he tends to use it as a tool to discredit when he doesn't actually have a good argument. I'm sure it seems real impressive to you when he pulls that, but for those of us who've actually studied philosophy and logic (ie. not Scott Alexander) it mostly just looks... I guess the polite word would be "cute".

EDIT: To be (slightly) fair, I might be thinking of one of the other pseudointellectuals from LessWrong. So many of them do this sort of nonsense that it gets kind of hard to differentiate them.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

Weird, I would rather say that the worst argument in the world would maybe be more like "you're wrong because you disagree with me". Though to be fair, I understand why Scott Alexander would not consider that a fallacy.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

So the 56% who were verbally pressured into sex mean we should dismiss the whole thing and assume it was technically consentual, or what? Are we using this as an excuse to dismiss the 46% who experienced physical force, or do we have to drop into the whole "they probably liked it" stuff for that one?

Oh, and FYI: Scott Alexander doesn't know what the word "fallacy" means, so he tends to use it as a tool to discredit when he doesn't actually have a good argument. I'm sure it seems real impressive to you when he pulls that, but for those of us who've actually studied philosophy and logic (ie. not Scott Alexander) it mostly just looks... I guess the polite word would be "cute".

Verbally coercing someone into having sex with you is, -at best- really, really, really shitty. It's also abusive. People should not do that.

Some jurisdictions or police or prosecutors won't treat it as criminal.

I strongly disagree. Every generation has had similar characteristics within them. When we marched for Civil Rights and against the war I guess that was our self-indulgence showing. Our feelings that Jim Crow and bombing people who had done us no harm was morally repugnant was an opinion based on those feelings. There were more than a couple of us showing up if you'd care to peruse some pictures. I'll be hard to spot since they are mostly wide shots. Making judgements on people who happen to be born within a certain time frame and lumping them all together on that basis has a certain aroma. I don't mean to hijack this thread on this off-topic point, but I felt compelled to rebut what I feel is thinly veiled bigotry.

The social, political, environmental, and economic trends that occurred when Boomers were the dominant group in American political and social life are a matter of uncontroversial historical fact, not bigotry. The world has gone to shit in several important and far-reaching ways between 1970 and 2019. If you did your best to prevent that, do not consider yourself personally criticized; like I said, you can stand apart from the herd without denying the stampede towards the cliff. But your generation sucks in demonstrable and world-changing ways. Most of the reasonably woke Boomers I know agree with the assesment, but wear the shoe if it fits, I guess?

Civil rights was your parents' generation, not yours, by the way, and opposition to the war was not an overwhelmingly held view even among the young, whose motivations were complicated by the draft anyway.

There's a huge gulf between the seriousness of some of these crimes, but too many people want to paint everything with the same brush.

No, they don't actually, that's just the convenient narrative people like you make up to avoid having to face the reality of things. There's plenty of nuance, you're just ignoring it with nonsense like:

"Well both people lost their job!"

That's the most pathetic equivalency argument I've ever seen.

Here's the basic truth, there's nothing nefarious or complicated about this: If you are in a position of power, or a figurehead or face of an organization, and you do things that are embarrassing to them, and compromise their mission, you will be asked to leave. Your cost has outweighed your worth, the math is simple.

That's not censorship, or mob rules or whatever other nonsense people want to call it. A witch hunt! It's not, as one person laughably tried to argue, about whether the things that were said were illegal.

That's basic shit, that's how it works. MIT fucked up. Big time. They looked the other way to cash checks, and they were shady about it, and it's costing people jobs as the fallout comes down. The fact that they went to such lengths to hide the source of the money, even internally, is more than enough proof to show they knew what was going down. It's just, well, it was a lot of money and they didn't care. And now it looks really bad. And anyone who is in a position of defending sex trafficking underage girls and treating women badly is now holding the ball, and being asked to put it down, and pick up a box with their stuff instead.

Ultimately this is a story of greed overruling morals. And there are people who want desperately to defend MIT, because they like the things that money buys, and they like the cushy environment they surround themselves in. And that it has consequences for other people is inconvenient and easy to ignore.

Fucking A. Just stop trying to carry water for these shitheads and the organizations that gave them the freedom and power to operate far too long, okay? They don't need your help.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

Where have you seen that quote, are you refering to his statement that 14 year old should be able consent? If I remember correctly he didn't say consent to sex with much older people, only consent, which could be making what already happens between teens of similar age legal. In any case, it wouldn't be far of what most of Scandinavia has with the age of the age of consent at 15.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

Where have you seen that quote, are you refering to his statement that 14 year old should be able consent? If I remember correctly he didn't say consent to sex with much older people, only consent, which could be making what already happens between teens of similar age legal. In any case, it wouldn't be far of what most of Scandinavia has with the age of the age of consent at 15.

The thing is, a 15 year old consenting to sex with another 15 year old is a very different thing - ethically, emotionally, developmentally - than consenting to sex with a significant power and age differential, or consenting to prostitution or porn or varsity-level sex. A middle teenager still has a long, long way to go, neurologically and emotionally, and children (for that's what they are) are still changing a lot year over year at that age.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

Where have you seen that quote, are you refering to his statement that 14 year old should be able consent? If I remember correctly he didn't say consent to sex with much older people, only consent, which could be making what already happens between teens of similar age legal. In any case, it wouldn't be far of what most of Scandinavia has with the age of the age of consent at 15.

Maybe go look at what he has written. There are links in the fine article.

This year he said he finally understands that it's not healthy for a child to have sex with an adult.

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

Where have you seen that quote, are you refering to his statement that 14 year old should be able consent? If I remember correctly he didn't say consent to sex with much older people, only consent, which could be making what already happens between teens of similar age legal. In any case, it wouldn't be far of what most of Scandinavia has with the age of the age of consent at 15.

I'm not referring to that statement, no. I can look for the specific quote I was thinking of, but here's one that's along the same lines:

Someone pointed out that the age of consent in the US Virgin Islands, where the incident allegedly occurred, is 18. That makes sex with a 17-year-old girl, "willing" or not, statutory rape. But Stallman wasn't persuaded.

"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17," Stallman wrote.

Is it morally absurd to define rape based on which country it happened in? You get married in the US and your spouse is 20. You honeymoon in Portugal. You filthy fucking rapist! But But but the age of consent in the US is 16!

We can have plenty of fun playing moral high ground (I will join after I move to Bahrain). How about "Parental consent" in the US? "Parental consent" marriages trump age of consent, my cousin got married at 14 (It did save his life but still..) . If you are married can you bang someone of any age? That seems super fucked up (and your parents consented.. ew)

I suspect it comes down to "My way is the right way" for most and "My church says" for others.

Except Stallman has openly stated that he's against the idea of any age of consent, and that he thinks there's nothing wrong with it when a consenting child sleeps with an adult in general. He even admitted to holding this position when, in what is the more miraculous story here, he admitted that he was wrong about it.

Where have you seen that quote, are you refering to his statement that 14 year old should be able consent? If I remember correctly he didn't say consent to sex with much older people, only consent, which could be making what already happens between teens of similar age legal. In any case, it wouldn't be far of what most of Scandinavia has with the age of the age of consent at 15.

Yeah, there are numerous states in the US where age of consent is 16. Both in the Scandinavian countries, as well as the US states throw out that age as soon as either coercion or prostitution is involved. In case of Marvin Minsky it was both.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else. We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

Okay, so first off, consent is consent, and if there's no freely given consent, it's rape. Glad I could clear that up for you. It's not fallacious, it's just a clear and uncontroversial line you happen to - for some straaaange reason - want to muddy up. If she's not saying "oh fuck yes" and tearing your clothes off, it's not consentual, and it needs to end.

Secondly, don't be a parent, okay? If you think it's normal to force a child to do stuff they don't want to do, you have absolutely no fucking business whatsoever being in charge of one. You can get buy-in without force.

And you most particularly have no business being in charge of a female child, because no girl or woman should ever feel as if she has to engage in sex without freely giving consent because she has to please someone she likes. That someone she likes can go to the bathroom and crank one out if he needs to get his rocks off that bad.

"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," he wrote on Saturday. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm her psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that."

what an idiot.

You mean all these years as an adult, before you learned it was not a good thing, you could not recognize that having sex with a child was not a good thing? So all these years if a child had come along that you wanted you would not have seen anything wrong with having sex with them?

So all these years before you supposedly learned it was not a good thing, you remained a threat to children?

That's quite a leap you're making between positing about a child's reaction to sex and becoming a threat to children.

Stallman has been at MIT since he was eighteen. IIRC, his parents were professors, and he began coding on very early computers when he was around 14. Safe to say, he's led a highly-sheltered life, and his opinions about things haven't necessarily benefited from experience outside the university.

its not a leap. All pedophiles start the same way in believing that having sex with children is ok to do.

Welp, that's it, then, isn't it? Stallman needs to go to prison and, if he survives and gets out, we'll put his name up in post offices. Good riddance to another rapist.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that just about all pedophiles start off as victims of some sort of assault themselves. These behavioral patterns, once established, can sometimes be traced back hundreds of years through family letters and records.

Per a discussion with a family friend who used to do sex crime detective work, and now does social work, there is no correlation between prior victimization and likelihood of becoming a predator. Given that she was in town for a conference on the issue, I'm inclined to take her at her word.

That's really interesting to me. I'd be interested in breaking the question down, i.e. to find out how the research she's familiar with was done, and by whom.

I've seen research to the contrary, and I've met (and dated) several people who were molested. Every single one had a history of molestation in their families, and strangely enough, they were all placed in the position to be molested purposely, by their mothers, who in three of the cases actually rationalized it afterward by saying, "I went through it. You'll be fine."

I actually fostered a little girl whose mother had been molested constantly as a child by her stepfather. The great-grandmother was a prostitute in Corpus Cristi who had also been molested, and who, in turn, rented out the grandmother as a toddler to visiting sailors. The grandmother chose the stepfather and deliberately left the mother in the same room with him. Ultimately, the mother chose a man whose ex-wife had left him because he'd molested his stepdaughter. She took the girl from me and placed her with the new boyfriend, who then molested her. I faced a choice: report the problem to CPS and have the girl removed to a foster home, or say nothing and leave her in that situation.

I've accepted for a long time that people I've met who have been molested by a family member probably have that behavioral pattern in their families. I'd be interested in knowing what the current research says, and whether it's being done by a sociologist or a psychologist.

EDIT: Just did a quick bit of googling, plus a look at the Wikipedia entry. Victims of molestation exhibit a whole range of psychological problems, some of which lead to repeating the pattern later and some of which lead to other unhealthy behaviors. It's not at all a simple field of study. Suffice it to say that the victims rarely emerge without problems.

Except that the article defines rape as including verbal pressure to have sex. This is the "noncentral fallacy" (what Scott Alexander calls "the worst argument in the world").

First off, Scott Alexander can fuck himself sideways. Is he some sort of rape expert that we should be paying attention to? What makes his opinion so unique as to deserve enshrinement?

Second "Have sex with me or else" would be considered verbal pressure to have sex. So unless you have some evidence that the authors used some incorrect definition of "verbal consent", you're just projecting your own opinions into the article.

Quote:

Quote:

"The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that's unwanted or nonconsensual," Hawks says.

That's a good definition if your goal is to inflate statistics, but not for anything else.

We all do many things that we don't want to do, perhaps because we have to, or because we know it will please someone we like. We especially and routinely force children to do all sorts of things they don't want to do, down to making them eat food that disgusts them.

God damn, you are a horrible person. If you truly believe this, you need help. Now.

"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," he wrote on Saturday. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm her psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that."

what an idiot.

You mean all these years as an adult, before you learned it was not a good thing, you could not recognize that having sex with a child was not a good thing? So all these years if a child had come along that you wanted you would not have seen anything wrong with having sex with them?

So all these years before you supposedly learned it was not a good thing, you remained a threat to children?

That's quite a leap you're making between positing about a child's reaction to sex and becoming a threat to children.

Stallman has been at MIT since he was eighteen. IIRC, his parents were professors, and he began coding on very early computers when he was around 14. Safe to say, he's led a highly-sheltered life, and his opinions about things haven't necessarily benefited from experience outside the university.

its not a leap. All pedophiles start the same way in believing that having sex with children is ok to do.

Welp, that's it, then, isn't it? Stallman needs to go to prison and, if he survives and gets out, we'll put his name up in post offices. Good riddance to another rapist.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that just about all pedophiles start off as victims of some sort of assault themselves. These behavioral patterns, once established, can sometimes be traced back hundreds of years through family letters and records.

Per a discussion with a family friend who used to do sex crime detective work, and now does social work, there is no correlation between prior victimization and likelihood of becoming a predator. Given that she was in town for a conference on the issue, I'm inclined to take her at her word.

Her statement and that of Studbolt are not the same thing. His is "If someone's a child abuser, they were very likely abused by family members." Your friend's is "If someone's been abused, they won't necessarily keep abusing." Both can be true at the same time.

Yes but all of them are called rapists. Even for a 3 month difference. I think it should be about the severity of the case...

You're willfully ignoring that prior nugget of information that "[the] U.S. Virgin Islands set the age of consent at 16 if the partner is less than 5 years older, otherwise at 18." Again, try arguing against the actual issue, for a change.

59 months.

The actual issue is that people are being called rapists over an 1 month difference. I don't care about Epstein and neither did Stallman.

This isn't the issue.

The issue is that there is a -huge- age range of partners for an 80 year old that are creepy, but not illegal.

And Minsky evidently pushed that as hard as he could (and apparently far enough that it was criminal).

He had agency and choice in his behavior.

I like to think I’m open minded but the old ‘half your age plus seven’ seems a bit sketchy unless the younger party is 25 or so.

I don't think we disagree. Minsky was 73 or so years old in 2000.

Half his age + 7 gets a partner 44 years old. Even if we grant him 15 years of leeway, that's 29. But no, he's alleged to have fucked someone young enough to be his great granddaughter.

Exactly. For context, I'm 37, and would probably seem comically naïve to a 60 year old woman.

I was referring to the person up thread who was debating whether 17 years 11 months was discernable from 18 months. If you're 18 years and three months old, sure.

Otherwise, if you're working in months, she/he is almost certainly too young.

I wonder how this will change the Free Software Foundation and it's hard line on open source licensing.

GPLv3 has been controversial, and Torvalds refuses to allow Linux (excuse me GNU/Linux), to be licensed with it. Sort of a problem when Linux is the actual kernel that GNU is based around. Firms are careful to track their software licenses to avoid getting caught incorporating something that uses a GPLv3 license into their release. For example, one place where I worked was including a third party Python library that was licensed only under GPL 3, and we ended up pulling the release because of that. (Python itself is not under GPL, but a more open compatible license, but this particular developer used the GPLv3 license for his code).

Apple has been avoiding third party packages that use GPLv3 for quite a while. It has refused to include BASH over version 3.2 because later versions of BASH are only licensed under GPLv3. Their latest version of macOS now includes Zshell and not BASH as the default shell.

Maybe now that Stallman is out, a more relaxed version of the GPL license can be created which would allow commercial developers to feel safer incorporating open source projects into their software.

I wonder how this will change the Free Software Foundation and it's hard line on open source licensing.

GPLv3 has been controversial, and Torvalds refuses to allow Linux (excuse me GNU/Linux), to be licensed with it. Sort of a problem when Linux is the actual kernel that GNU is based around. Firms are careful to track their software licenses to avoid getting caught incorporating something that uses a GPLv3 license into their release. For example, one place where I worked was including a third party Python library that was licensed only under GPL 3, and we ended up pulling the release because of that. (Python itself is not under GPL, but a more open compatible license, but this particular developer used the GPLv3 license for his code).

Apple has been avoiding third party packages that use GPLv3 for quite a while. It has refused to include BASH over version 3.2 because later versions of BASH are only licensed under GPLv3. Their latest version of macOS now includes Zshell and not BASH as the default shell.

Maybe now that Stallman is out, a more relaxed version of the GPL license can be created which would allow commercial developers to feel safer incorporating open source projects into their software.

I fully except Stallman to keep calling the shots from off stage, so probably not.

You're willfully ignoring that prior nugget of information that "[the] U.S. Virgin Islands set the age of consent at 16 if the partner is less than 5 years older, otherwise at 18." Again, try arguing against the actual issue, for a change.

59 months.

The actual issue is that people are being called rapists over an 1 month difference. I don't care about Epstein and neither did Stallman.

This isn't the issue.

The issue is that there is a -huge- age range of partners for an 80 year old that are creepy, but not illegal.

And Minsky evidently pushed that as hard as he could (and apparently far enough that it was criminal).

He had agency and choice in his behavior.

I like to think I’m open minded but the old ‘half your age plus seven’ seems a bit sketchy unless the younger party is 25 or so.

I don't think we disagree. Minsky was 73 or so years old in 2000.

Half his age + 7 gets a partner 44 years old. Even if we grant him 15 years of leeway, that's 29. But no, he's alleged to have fucked someone young enough to be his great granddaughter.

Exactly. For context, I'm 37, and would probably seem comically naïve to a 60 year old woman.

I was referring to the person up thread who was debating whether 17 years 11 months was discernable from 18 months. If you're 18 years and three months old, sure.

Otherwise, if you're working in months, she/he is almost certainly too young.

Bingo. And a lot of jurisdictions have laws that make exceptions for people close in age.

Having clear lines is important, though. There is a limit to how much rat shit can be in chocolate. I'd like to amount to be 0, but I acknowledge there is a non-0 limit. Otoh, I have no sympathy for someone pushing a limit like that, it is gross long before it becomes illegal.

If your "free thinking" is actually oppression, then it's not free. And people like Stallman being hit with consequences for his words is a good thing. It's healthy line drawing. The only problem is that it took until now to get to it. But better late then never, keep that ball rolling I say.

So was Stallman oppressing anyone with his "free thinking"? Who was the victim here?

From reports, he sexually harassed every woman he could get close to. Evidently he valued his freedom to harass (and grope?) over their freedom to just do their jobs or learn.

That is entirely consistent with his faux-naive endorsement of pedophilia.

The fact that we're even having this discussion, that it involves questions like this, and that he wasn't summarily pushed out of anything professional years ago is part of why we have "#metoo" as "a thing", and why it's still not enough.

What a lot of people don't seem to get is that for every woman who got harassed by someone like Stallman, there's at least one (hah, pretty sure it's far more) who didn't pursue or who turned down related positions. Not just because who the fuck wants to work with a sexually harassing (among other things) creep that seems to get away with whatever (and has a cult following that will go after you if you speak up), but because of the fact that letting that go sends a message about who you want to employee and how they should expect to be viewed.

I think (as a straight white guy) the most disturbing thing about #metoo is realising how pretty much all women have to deal with this crap, and how oblivious most men (myself included) were to it.

A lot of guys seem to be having trouble either believing this kind of thing happens or realising and accepting that they’ve either been participating in or enabling it by turning a blind eye.

Awareness is the first step towards change and all that.

Considering that the first sexual experience for 1 in 16 women is rape, I'd say that there is a lot of awareness that still needs to be handed out.

That statistic is horrible for two reasons:- we all will have many more than 16 women in our friendship groups.- we all probably know at least one man who committed one of those rapes.Awareness may need to be meted out with a baseball bat.

Exactly. For context, I'm 37, and would probably seem comically naïve to a 60 year old woman.

I was referring to the person up thread who was debating whether 17 years 11 months was discernable from 18 months. If you're 18 years and three months old, sure.

Otherwise, if you're working in months, she/he is almost certainly too young.

Which is really skirting around the real issue, namely that if you don't know how old they are, you shouldn't be fucking them.

Agreed. I'm doing that terrible english thing of understating something horrible to soften it a little with humour.

/s tag seemed inappropriate but probably necessary in the absence of body language

Sorry, I did get the /s even in its absence. It's just that Ars has a depressingly large contingent of assholes who are nodding in agreement with Stallman and they really honk me off. Sometimes my shots go a touch wider than intended.

From reports, he sexually harassed every woman he could get close to. Evidently he valued his freedom to harass (and grope?) over their freedom to just do their jobs or learn.

That is entirely consistent with his faux-naive endorsement of pedophilia.

The fact that we're even having this discussion, that it involves questions like this, and that he wasn't summarily pushed out of anything professional years ago is part of why we have "#metoo" as "a thing", and why it's still not enough.

What a lot of people don't seem to get is that for every woman who got harassed by someone like Stallman, there's at least one (hah, pretty sure it's far more) who didn't pursue or who turned down related positions. Not just because who the fuck wants to work with a sexually harassing (among other things) creep that seems to get away with whatever (and has a cult following that will go after you if you speak up), but because of the fact that letting that go sends a message about who you want to employee and how they should expect to be viewed.

I think (as a straight white guy) the most disturbing thing about #metoo is realising how pretty much all women have to deal with this crap, and how oblivious most men (myself included) were to it.

A lot of guys seem to be having trouble either believing this kind of thing happens or realising and accepting that they’ve either been participating in or enabling it by turning a blind eye.

Awareness is the first step towards change and all that.

Considering that the first sexual experience for 1 in 16 women is rape, I'd say that there is a lot of awareness that still needs to be handed out.

That statistic is horrible for two reasons:- we all will have many more than 16 women in our friendship groups.- we all probably know at least one man who committed one of those rapes.Awareness may need to be meted out with a baseball bat.

It's horrible for so many reasons that it's hard to write coherently.

Addressing this is going to require a culture and attitude change and one that men will need to participate in.

It's very, very likely that women in your/our/all-encompassing family, at your work, in your classes, friends, partners, etc... have been sexually assaulted. Likewise with sexual harassment.

It's very likely that men in our social circles have done the same.

You may know men who 'joke" about that or pay attention to countdowns to when an actress or musician "turns legal".

Social censure and making that behavior unwelcome is a starting point to changing that.

So is talking to men and boys about consent.

So is talking to men and boys about the shitty realities of sexual assault and sexual harassment that women face.

Some men think they don't know any women who have been assaulted or harassed. More often, the women in their lives who have been assaulted and harassed don't trust those men enough to tell them.